Much has been said about the tag and ping method, but to best optimize such a tactic, one has to familiarize himself with the basics of social bookmarking as well.

Look at the tool icons on top of your current browser window. See the icon labeled with a star as "Favorites?" If you'd click on the same, you'd have the opportunity to be able to add this web page to your list of favorites, and view the same later on. This is called bookmarking, and it is quite an important tool for the overall web experience.

But this kind of bookmarking is limited to the capacity of your own computer. The web pages you will select will be stored in your hard drive. Social bookmarking is quite different from this.

What Is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking allows you to create an account with a variety of existing services. This account will give you the option to bookmark your favorite websites under certain categories. But instead of saving these bookmarks in your hard drive, you'd be able to store them in the web server itself.

The categories under which you can store your bookmarks are quite similar to tags. This means that you have total control over where to place certain websites. You can categorize them under any tags you wish, as tags are often broad and general.

The flexibility that such a medium allows is immense. Since humans control the categorizing instead of a search engine algorithm, social bookmarks can be arranged in a way that is more appealing for internet users, and more practical for them as well. The name of the game here is truly relevant content, not seemingly relevant content through efficient search engine optimization.

But How Can Social Bookmarking Help Internet Marketers?

The marketing potentials of social bookmarking are slowly being exploited by savvy online businessmen, and to great effects at that. Take a look at the many ways by which you can increase your profits through this method:

- A lot of the social bookmarking websites are picked up by the search engines, and they figure very well in the search engine page results. Hence, if you include your websites under certain hot tags, you have great chances of picking up highly amazing back links that will contribute to your own page rank. Also, the direct traffic you can generate from such a channel will prove to be worthwhile.

- More and more people are starting to realize that tags provide more relevant and quality information that the results produced by search engines. Soon enough, tagging will be able to surpass search engines as the information finding tool of choice by most internet users. Now is the best time to hop aboard the tag bandwagon. And social bookmarking is one of the best ways to capitalize on the same.

- Social bookmarking websites boast of the same interconnectivity present in blogs. People with their own social bookmarking accounts link to one another. This is a great way to generate direct traffic, and further increase your back links.

How Do You Start With Social Bookmarking?

There are many social bookmarking websites in cyberspace today. And given the ever increading popularity of the medium, more and more similar websites are being developed each and everyday.

To avail of this novel marketing technique, you just have to create an account with any of them. Thereafter, simply place your websites under relevant hot tags. The system will take care of the rest.

Here are some of the more popular social bookmarking websites you can join:
30daytags.com
blinkbits.com
citeulike.org
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us